Poems by Darcy Scholts

DOOM CABINET

I opened the vast periphery of evening and translated
the great speeches of the wonder.  Each night
I hoped it would tell a different audience.  Each time
it focused on a sentence, sadder than I would have warned.

I heard it, not only when I truncated all my visions
away on social media, until the computer burst with untold epics.
What was left: a skinny picture of dawn over the horizon of an Aren’t I Special sea,
with radio calls that grated,
and I interpreted the vast bureaucratic that spoke of nothing,

but mostly signal jamming cliches and chirps and clicks.  I consoled myself,
heavy with doubt.
I then opened myself to take up rebellion, ached by the spoonful.
I opened the herb garden and the sun to let the growth of childhood in,
I dug furrows with my bare feet dragging my corn into new soil several feet into frustrated lawn,
cold as the visiting crows as I kissed the inept depth, an ear
turned toward the series of gyrating pinwheels tied to a green wire fence.
And then the wind stopped.  If I break
the many complaints will the tides rise?

I am consumed with moon lust and open graves, and what may fornicate
inside them.  What ignored shapeshifter lives there, breeds
progress?  An open shaft to the wide gaping wormfilled earth
is not a metaphor.
I spade it open each day.  I leave the old crumbling shells of leaves and
pine with the needles, thrown to forsaken corners.

===

OFFICE TERRARIUM

Bogged.
Down.
Swamp and feathers.

I could sit at a ticking computer
listening to untended swaths
of paper behind me
slowly sinking
creating their own
soil, bubbles in the water.

Frogs chirp their mating songs,
loud voices in olive-you-green,
tiny bodies we can’t find.
The tadpoles were actually
more visible,
and of course there go the bugs
in the hard drive and
traces of mice in
odd corners.

The spider’d better not
have landed in my salad.

I could watch ferns grow
from this new land
forgetting that water
needs to flow freely
not quagmire
Yes, quagmire as verb.

I am all too frond
of this office. It’s a jungle
in here. Never mind out there!

Fishing for answers,
the clarion call of (let)
osprey from above is
preying to get something done.

Remember
the birds can still fly through
and thrive here.
The carpet is
magic.  Who knew?
The mousepad
is rocks.

Red winged
blackbird’s call is
singularity in song
getting done
what needs to be done.

Go go go.
Run, do not walk.  No,
fly.  Scramble, tuck
papers under your wing,
fly out the door,
and DO.